Table of Contents

Survey of Consumer Finances, 1960 (ICPSR 7440)

Principal Investigator(s):
University of Michigan. Survey Research Center. Economic Behavior Program

Summary:

This data collection is one in a series of surveys of consumer finances conducted annually between 1946 and 1971. In a nationally
representative sample, the head of each spending unit (usually the
husband, the main earner, or the owner of the home) was interviewed.
The basic unit of reference in the study was the spending unit, but
some family data are also available. The questions in the 1960 survey
covered the respondent's attitudes toward national economic conditions
and price activity, as well as the respondent's own financial
situation. Other questions examined the spending unit head's
occupation, and the nature and amount of the spending unit's income,
debts, liquid assets, changes in liquid assets, savings, investment
preferences, and actual and expected purchases of cars and other major
durables. In addition, the survey explored in detail the subject of
housing, e.g., previous and present home ownership, value of
respondent's dwelling, and mortgage information. Demographic variables include
number of people in the spending unit, age, sex, and education of the
head, and the race and sex of the respondent.

This data collection is one in a series of surveys of consumer finances conducted annually between 1946 and 1971. In a nationally
representative sample, the head of each spending unit (usually the
husband, the main earner, or the owner of the home) was interviewed.
The basic unit of reference in the study was the spending unit, but
some family data are also available. The questions in the 1960 survey
covered the respondent's attitudes toward national economic conditions
and price activity, as well as the respondent's own financial
situation. Other questions examined the spending unit head's
occupation, and the nature and amount of the spending unit's income,
debts, liquid assets, changes in liquid assets, savings, investment
preferences, and actual and expected purchases of cars and other major
durables. In addition, the survey explored in detail the subject of
housing, e.g., previous and present home ownership, value of
respondent's dwelling, and mortgage information. Demographic variables include
number of people in the spending unit, age, sex, and education of the
head, and the race and sex of the respondent.

Dataset(s)

Study Description

Citation

University of Michigan. Survey Research Center. Economic Behavior Program. Survey of Consumer Finances, 1960. ICPSR07440-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2014-01-10. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07440.v2

Unit of Observation:
spending unit (an individual living alone or a family living together and pooling incomes to meet expenses).

Universe:
Spending units in the United States.

Data Type(s):
survey data

Methodology

Sample:
National cross-section of spending units representative of the total population of the United States. The number of spending units interviewed in 1960 was 2,972, in approximately 2,760 family units.

Time Method:
Longitudinal: Trend / Repeated Cross-section

Weight:
No weight variables are included in this dataset.

Mode of Data Collection:
face-to-face interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed consistency checks.

Created variable labels and/or value labels.

Standardized missing values.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release: 1984-07-02

Version History:

2014-01-10 The SPSS and SAS setups were updated by adding values and value labels to the variables documentation. Stata setup files, as well as SPSS and Stata system files, a SAS transport (CPORT) file, an R data file, and a tab-delimited file have been added to the collection. The codebook was updated.